Celebrity Booking Mess....UGH!

We booked online with Celebrity cruises. Captains club numbers etc are listed. We were assigned a random Travel Agent who is not ours and never has been??????

Contacted Celebrity only to be told that if we want to transfer them to our travel agent we need to fill out forms? Filled out the forms....THREE WEEKS.....Still nothing from Celebrity???? Nada, Our travel agent has nothing but air.

During this time, according to Celebrity and Supervisors......Any changes to our bookings MUST be done with this random travel agent they mistakenly assigned us? Or we can wait until Celebrity finally processes the paperwork???? This was not our mistake?

Nobody has helped and the supervisor has told us as of today.....All you can do is Wait, that department is very busy......Three Weeks busy? What kind of business is this? Lisa Lutoff-Perlo HELP!

Thanks for listening.

If you never gave them permission, nor have any affiliation whatsoever with the TA they assigned your booking to, then I would think they are in beach of privacy guidelines. You should speak to a supervisor if not and demand they rectify their error immediately. 2-3 weeks 'we are busy' is unacceptable (and heard it before when I've emailed them and had to chase a response after weeks of silence).

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In our experience with Celebrity, they always assign you (randomly) to one of their own "cruise consultants" or whatever they call them; it's just a T.A. that works for them. If this is what happened to you, it's nothing unusual. You still have the right to transfer the booking to your own T.A., as you have initiated. Since I've never done this transfer, I don't know how long it normally takes. As long as it's within 60 days of booking and before final payment due date, you should be OK.

I booked online with Celebrity and then gave ta the booking number to transfer the reservation. A few minutes after giving ta booking number I received an email from Celebrity notifying me that a request to transfer was received and within a day I received notice from Celebrity that the transfer had been processed. Ta then emailed me the confirmation of transfer with ta new price and added obc. It was done within a couple days even though Celebrity and ta said it could take 5 days. I never had to fill out a form. Very simple process to save almost $700 off booking and get an additional $400 obc.

We booked online with Celebrity cruises. Captains club numbers etc are listed. We were assigned a random Travel Agent who is not ours and never has been??????

This is someone who is just randomly assigned to you and it is never necessary to use this person at all, for anything.

My suggestion would be to call the Captain's Club number

1-800-760-0654

Our experience with them has been that anyone who answers the phone there should be able to help you.

But even when they can't, they transfer you to someone who can.

Sometimes the line is busy and you may need to wait on hold for a while, so it is always a good idea to be prepared with something else to do while waiting, should it be necessary.

Other times they answer right away. We never know.

But we have almost always been very pleased with the service we receive when calling the Captain's Club.

The people who answer the phones there seem to be more knowledgeable than those who answer the general reservation numbers.

As long as your booking is still with Celebrity, they should be able to help you, but if the reservation has already been transferred to an outside TA, then you will need to deal with that TA instead.

You should be able to tell by looking at your reservation in your online Celebrity account.

Your pricing and payment information will still show up there as long as you are still the owner of the reservation, but once it is transferred to an outside TA, all your pricing and payment information disappears from your Celebrity account.

Contacted Celebrity only to be told that if we want to transfer them to our travel agent we need to fill out forms? Filled out the forms....THREE WEEKS.....Still nothing from Celebrity???? Nada, Our travel agent has nothing but air.

The one at this link: Celebrity Cruises Travel Agency Transfer Form

You may want to try sending it again (in case there was a glitch) as people have reported getting very quick results using this form, which is submitted immediately online,

in contrast to the older transfer forms that needed to be emailed or faxed.

In any case, it can't hurt to give it a try as you have nothing to lose by doing so.

Good luck!

I booked online with Celebrity and then gave ta the booking number to transfer the reservation. A few minutes after giving ta booking number I received an email from Celebrity notifying me that a request to transfer was received and within a day I received notice from Celebrity that the transfer had been processed. Ta then emailed me the confirmation of transfer with ta new price and added obc. It was done within a couple days even though Celebrity and ta said it could take 5 days. I never had to fill out a form. Very simple process to save almost $700 off booking and get an additional $400 obc.

We have also had similar experiences as apparently some TAs will handle the entire transfer themselves immediately without requiring us to fill out or submit a transfer form.

The last time we encountered this was when we were transferring a reservation to a TA on the last day before Celebrity's final payment date.

The TA just kept us on the phone the whole time while completing the transfer process with Celebrity, then took our credit card info, submitted our final payment, and immediately emailed us our guest copy of the Celebrity invoice showing that we were paid in full as well as our copy of the TA's own invoice showing all the perks we were receiving.

We believe that the TA included us in a group booking because of the discounted price, but we didn't care and didn't ask.

By the time we finished that one phone call, it was a "done deal" and all we had left to do was the online check in and printing of the xpress pass.

But there are other TAs who do still require us to submit the transfer form, although even that is so much quicker and easier these days than it used to be.

I am only guessing here as I don't know this for a fact, but I have the impression that the TAs who do high volume business with a cruise line are the ones who are willing and able to process transfers immediately on the spot without requiring us to submit a transfer form first.

At least that has been our experience so far.

We booked online with Celebrity cruises. Captains club numbers etc are listed. We were assigned a random Travel Agent who is not ours and never has been??????

 

 

 

Contacted Celebrity only to be told that if we want to transfer them to our travel agent we need to fill out forms? Filled out the forms....THREE WEEKS.....Still nothing from Celebrity???? Nada, Our travel agent has nothing but air.

 

 

 

During this time, according to Celebrity and Supervisors......Any changes to our bookings MUST be done with this random travel agent they mistakenly assigned us? Or we can wait until Celebrity finally processes the paperwork???? This was not our mistake?

 

 

 

Nobody has helped and the supervisor has told us as of today.....All you can do is Wait, that department is very busy......Three Weeks busy? What kind of business is this? Lisa Lutoff-Perlo HELP!

 

 

 

Thanks for listening.

Was this an agent where you had gotten a quote in the past? Maybe when you did they had held a room for you. Otherwise how would they be connected to your booking. Is the agent you want to transfer to one you have used before with the cruise line.?

Can't be of much help, other than to just tell you to hang in there and keep after them: I can definitely empathize. It took me almost 5 weeks of aggravation to get my cruise transferred from X to TA - and the TA is a high volume agency. X kept claiming they never received the transfer request, despite me faxing and emailing it on two separate occasions one month prior to deadline. My TA called X herself and they told her it was "being processed". Still nothing. TA called X back again and X required me to re-send everything again. Finally it went through. When I asked the TA what happened, she said X just kept repeating the same thing - we never got the request.

We booked online with Celebrity cruises. Captains club numbers etc are listed. We were assigned a random Travel Agent who is not ours and never has been??????

 

Contacted Celebrity only to be told that if we want to transfer them to our travel agent we need to fill out forms? Filled out the forms....THREE WEEKS.....Still nothing from Celebrity???? Nada, Our travel agent has nothing but air.

 

During this time, according to Celebrity and Supervisors......Any changes to our bookings MUST be done with this random travel agent they mistakenly assigned us? Or we can wait until Celebrity finally processes the paperwork???? This was not our mistake?

 

Celebrity has never and cannot assign your reservation to a travel agent. What happened is they assigned a Celebrity Travel Consultant to handle your reservation. Nothing happened to your reservation except they want you to go through that person at Celebrity. They are NOT a travel Agent. Did you get forms from YOUR TA? Those are the forms needed and they are almost always sent in by your TA. And yes, it does often take a couple weeks to process the change.

 

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Have you contacted your travel agent again? Have you actually contacted a TA you want to transfer the reservation too?

Why would anyone book online with Celebrity? The only reason I can think of is being unaware of how terrible their IT is?

I do a dummy booking while I am on hold for a live representative, then book. If I want to transfer to a TA, I do so after booking the cruise.

We booked online with Celebrity cruises. Captains club numbers etc are listed. We were assigned a random Travel Agent who is not ours and never has been??????

 

Contacted Celebrity only to be told that if we want to transfer them to our travel agent we need to fill out forms? Filled out the forms....THREE WEEKS.....Still nothing from Celebrity???? Nada, Our travel agent has nothing but air.

 

During this time, according to Celebrity and Supervisors......Any changes to our bookings MUST be done with this random travel agent they mistakenly assigned us? Or we can wait until Celebrity finally processes the paperwork???? This was not our mistake?

 

Nobody has helped and the supervisor has told us as of today.....All you can do is Wait, that department is very busy......Three Weeks busy? What kind of business is this? Lisa Lutoff-Perlo HELP!

 

Thanks for listening.

Call the Captain's Club Desk. They changed TAs for a friend of mine while she was on the phone in a matter of minutes. She told them she was computer illiterate (which is kind-of true) and they did it right away for her.

Recently I had some problem transferring booking to TA - got declined for a reason - past 60 days, when actually was only 33 days from the booking. Long story short - one call to Captain's club - issue resolved.

Business mind it is a strange business. Celebrity pay a tonne of commission to travel agents. Business wise they want to sell more through direct channels predominately the cheapest e channel (and finally working on their website). But the quality of the customer service/sales staff is cheap labour whereby the direct channel is frustrating for the customer and they prefer to deal with travel agents who are expensive in terms of commission. Silly lesson number one - invest in staff.! Invest in service.

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